Parenting Under the Influence

The following is a guest post from Kate Graham. In addition to writing her Enough newsletter on Substack, Kate offers individual and couples therapy as well as training programs on embodied healing for therapists. If you’d like to learn more about her private practice or program offerings, check out her website or send her an email. 

I walked into the sterile recovery room, a dozen little bays separated only by dull looking curtains, medical equipment scattered everywhere. I pulled back the curtain and there was my daughter, sitting half up in the hospital bed, dressed in her oversized hospital gown, sucking on ice chips. She bubbled on to the nurse about the things she loved—our beloved dog, her sister and how ice chips are her absolute favorite. Seeing the nurse beside her, allowed me to soften. The procedure had gone smoothly.

I transferred her to the car and we headed home. In the back of the car she swayed back and forth under her seatbelt repeating that she felt so good, clearly she was still heavily feeling the effects of the anesthesia which was to be expected.

Although my daughter was safely in the back of the car I could feel the distance between us. It was disconcerting. She felt too far away and I had no way to reach her. I wanted my little girl back, the way that I’ve known her from the moment she was born. So I waited for the medication to wear off, knowing she was in for a rough landing but we would be reunited.

This isn’t a story about my daughter's medical procedure. It is the moment that came to mind when asked by Sarah Harmon from The School of Mom to write about motherhood and wine culture. Illustrating the connection between a mother and a child and what it feels like when one person from this bonded pair inhabits a compromised and altered state of consciousness; when a person we love so dearly is under the influence and unreachable. It’s what I imagine children feel when their parents drink alcohol and become distant and unreachable—disconcerted, uneasy and vulnerable.

What does it feel like for a child when their care-giver is joyfully inebriated while being responsible for providing safety and protection? What does it feel like for a child when they get into the car and buckle to be driven home by a parent who has had a drink or two at dinner? What does it feel like for a child when the guardian is hungover and irritable the morning after? What does it feel like for a child when a loved one is in the room but no longer present and available?

The little girl inside me who grew up in a culture of heavy drinking already knows what it feels like for the child. She doesn’t trust people, she is afraid of being abandoned, she is afraid of authority figures, she has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, she seeks approval of others, she is highly self critical, she is frightened by angry people, she struggles to stand up for herself and she doesn’t feel entitled to her feelings. She understands what it feels like to grow up around alcohol, not in words or emotions, but in all that has been eroded in her relationship to herself and others.

It’s difficult to look at our drinking through the eyes of the child without falling into the vortex of shame. I have written here about how I stopped going to therapy for a while because of the shame I held around my own drinking. However, the birth of my first daughter and seeing the world from her perspective was the catalyst that transformed my relationship to alcohol.

Believing we deserve ‘me time’ without understanding how alcohol is another cultural crowbar separating women from themselves comes at a significant cost. While being marketed as for us, wine time and rose all day disempowers us, steals our vital energy and takes our money, the same way the beauty, fashion and wellness industries do. These industries tell us we are not enough, then conveniently have a solution to sell us which will solve all of our problems.

Wine culture advocates that mothers deserve alcohol as a reward for parenting, promotes the opportunity for care-givers to sedate themselves to cope with the endless demands of caring for children and encourages guardians to relax after a long day, placing the needs of adults above all else. However, any initial reduction in anxiety and stress from drinking leads to an overall increase in anxiety and requires more alcohol to achieve the desired result.

Alcohol is like a sledgehammer to the nervous system. It has a global impact on cognition, emotion, memory and movement. The World Health Organization states that no amount of alcohol is safe. In 2016, alcohol killed twice as many people as prescription opioids and heroin overdoses combined (and this statistic does not include drunk driving related deaths).

The facts are stark. So why do we so quickly bypass them and continue to do something that has killed more people than heroin?

Because we have been sold the idea that motherhood is the pinnacle of womanhood, without fully understanding the terms and conditions. Our bodies, again, become the vessel of heteronormativity. We aren't allowed to not want it, we aren't allowed to not like it and we definitely aren't allowed to fail. In some states we aren’t even allowed to choose not to become mothers. The denial of material suffering, alongside the incessant erosion of our personal boundaries and body autonomy, leaves us struggling to survive.

Servicing the needs of others while being told that we wanted it—a familiar story. We yearn for escape and seek ways to endure. Hovering outside of ourselves so we don’t touch the rage that lives inside. Stumbling forward, while trying not to let anyone see how much we are suffering.

Performing parenthood in isolation without adequate maternity leave, health care or child care as cost of living skyrockets and the boundaries between work and home are non-existent. As the relentless demands of parenting make us sick, alcohol offers a convenient but inadequate way to regulate our nervous systems.

I love my children more than anything. I feel grief in paper cuts as I watch them grow older, inching farther away from me and closer towards adulthood. And at the end of each day I am stretched far beyond my capacity. Obliterated by the demands of the day. Barely able to keep my head above water, despite my privilege and access to resources.

So as we examine motherhood and wine culture, we can hold the complexity of both loving our children more than anything and the overwhelming challenges of parenting in our culture. How the rape culture is woven into motherhood, cloaked in a different fabric. Recognizing the constant contemporary threats to our survival and the need to regulate our nervous system. The pressure to be perfect parents and the antidote delivered to us, just at the right time, by big alcohol. How raising children in our society can both push us beyond our limits and be the portal into changing our relationship to alcohol so that we can reclaim our power as women.